Finance Disagreements Loom Over Copenhagen Summit

Copenhagen,
Denmark - As
international delegates arrive at the United Nations climate summit today,
developing-country negotiators are waiting for the industrialized world to
clarify how much money will be on the table.

European Union leaders stated in October that the world's
wealthy countries should provide €100 billion ($150 billion) each year by 2020
to help poorer countries transition to a low-carbon development path and adapt
to the damages of climate change.

European, U.S.,
and Japanese negotiators are divided, however, on whether the money will come
from new or existing aid budgets.

An EU negotiating text obtained
by The Guardian this week reveals
that the European Union plans to oppose any requirements that climate funds be
additional to or separate from current development aid.

Developing-country leaders and United Nations officials are
insisting that climate funds be additional to existing aid deals. If not, they
say, health, environment, and security programs that are already under-financed
may be compromised.

"There are real concerns that we might miss Millennium
Development Goals because of the climate change agenda," said Roberto
Bertollini, environment and health policy coordinator with the World Health Organization.

The European countries that support a separate climate fund,
such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway,
and Sweden,
regularly meet the international target of 0.7 percent of gross domestic
product committed to official development assistance.

Countries that struggle to meet their development-aid targets
would prefer that aid programs be repackaged into new climate funds. France and Germany, for instance, committed
less than 0.4 percent of their GDP to development aid in 2007, and both want
existing aid to be allocated to climate.

Last month, United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown
proposed a "Copenhagen
launch fund" that would run from 2010-2012 and accumulate $22 billion by 2013. The
funding would be split evenly between mitigation and adaptation activities. He
did not state whether the funding would be additional to existing aid.

The United
States has included $1.2 billion of international climate
aid in its 2010 budget. Legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives
and currently being debated in
the Senate would raise funds for international climate aid from the sale of
emission permits as part of a cap-and-trade system.

John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, requested that President Barack Obama's administration increase
funding for mitigation and adaptation aid in the 2011 budget.

"I urge you to include $3 billion in international climate
finance in the fiscal year 2011 budget to support our short-term climate
finance obligations and create the necessary glide path to enable our federal
agencies to fully and effectively utilize the increased resources Congress will
make available to them through climate change legislation," Kerry wrote on
Tuesday in a letter
to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.

Negotiators offered various proposals to raise new funds at
the U.N. summit in Poznań, Poland last year. A Norwegian plan
to generate revenue from auctioning national cap-and-trade permits received
general support from industrialized nations. The negotiating bloc of
least-developed countries suggested that airlines place a flat tax of $10-$15
on all international tickets. Mexico
proposed a "World Climate Change Fund" that would collect money based on each
country's unique situation of greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth.

Public and private funds have provided some $8 billion
annually in recent years for developing countries to form low-carbon economies
and $1 billion annually for adaptation programs. Estimates of how much money
developing countries will need range from $140 billion to $675 billion each
year for mitigation and $30 billion to $90 billion each year for adaptation,
according to the World
Bank.